Birding

I have taken and captured wildlife pictures for years, but I have never attached the label “birder” to myself. However, I backed many of my pictures from the last dozen years or so up to Google Photos and you can search these images by entering a search term. Entering “bird” generates quite a collection of images.

For me, calling someone a birder generates an imagery of a guy wearing a strange hat with binoculars and a bird identification book in his back pocket. I have personal friends who are birders and have even gone “birding” with them. I was pretty much lost. I could never see what they were looking at and when I happened to see a bird I had no clue what it was. It is my opinion that there are far too many sparrows. These birders kept “life lists” and might travel at great personal expense to add a few new entries. I, in contrast, used to shoot birds (with a gun) and mostly can recognize game birds. I also like to attract birds to my lake cabin deck and keep a list in my head of the species that show up to munch on black sunflower seeds, niger seed, and my home-made lard, peanut butter and various grains suet. Grape jelly and oranges are also productive attractants.

I understand people have personal passions and I suppose I have a few myself. If I somehow have taken to seeing birders as peculiar, the view was strongly shaped during a whale watching excursion we took while in Alaska. A group of birders decided to take the same trip (see previous comment related to life lists). This group kind of bolted from one area of the deck to the next when one of the birders called out a spot. After a while, it got annoying. I wanted to see puffins in the wild and even though I looked when I heard puffin mentioned, I had no luck.

We walked the elevated walkways of the South Padre Island Birding Center with a volunteer guide. This guy was cool and it turned out there was a lot to see. Among my collection of my bird pictures, I now have a photo of a Green Heron. I have a close up of two giant (this a description of their size and not part of their common name) pileated woodpeckers attacking suet on my deck. These same birds keep punching holes in my house. I have pictures of hummingbirds suspended in air taken with a fast enough setting that their wings show very little blur. I also think my photo of a baby loon riding the back of mom (I think) being fed a small fish by dad is more interesting. None of these make me a birder - maybe a photographer. Now, the green heron, on the other hand, is a good get.

I think a life list should be made up of photos you have personally taken and that are clear enough to be identified by other birders. However, I am new to this game and I guess the rules have existed far before digital gamers and telephoto lenses.  

Big Blue Heron

Green Heron

Least Bittern

Black-necked Stilt